Sunday, November 13, 2011

Dallas A-Lister Assaulted Again

I have writtenbeforeaboutThe A-List: Dallas personality Taylor Garrett who was the victim of a reported act of vandalism last month. Here is the nut-shell: Garrett is a gay political fund-raiser on The A-List: Dallas who made waves for hanging with anti-gay conservative speaker Ann Coulter. After a bit of publicity over this lunch, an online campaign emerged with the goal of getting Logo to cut out the Ann Coulter material from the show. Shortly after this, Garrett reported on Twitter that a threw a rock through his window by leftist anti-conservative gays. Bloggers questioned why this incident was being reported on Twitter and not to the police and the Twitter posts were eventually removed by Garrett. He eventually filed a police report 2-3 days later, but explained that his building manager had actually filed a police report shortly after the vandalism was initially discovered. (Check out the earlierblogposts for more detailed information.)

Fast forward to Friday night, Garrett reported once again an attack by anti-conservative gay activists. By Saturday morning, he already had an interview logged in with The Daily Caller, where he discusses the incident:

Taylor Garrett, a Republican consultant in Texas who stars in the reality series on the channel LOGO TV, said in an interview that he was attacked outside a birthday party in Dallas after finding a vandal scratching “F–k Coulter” on the side of his car... Photos provided by Garrett to TheDC show the phrase about Coulter keyed in large letters across his car. Other photos show Garrett with a bloody ear and blood covering his white shirt.

“I was at a party and one of my friends arrived and I had a present for him, so I went back to my car to get the present,” he recalled. “When I walked out to my car, I saw someone squatting next to my car.” After asking the vandal what he was doing, Garrett said the large man stood up and decked him in his left eye. Garrett fell to the ground. He also scraped up his body by falling into some glass that was next to his car, Garrett said. The attacker got away...

On Friday night after the incident with the vandal, Garrett said his friends called an ambulance, but paramedics did not take him to the hospital. Garrett said he begged the police not to put his name on the police report, because “I didn’t want to be in the press again about this,” but his friends convinced him otherwise...

(Garrett) said he’s disgusted by those in the gay community and media who doubt him and accuse him of trying to gin up publicity for himself by going public with these stories. Garrett said he decided to join the show because he wanted to show that there are gay “conservative, Republican, Christians” out there. But he said he has been “destroyed by the gay community” for his views and he’s doubtful he’ll return for another season after this.

I'm actually not someone who automatically believes that Garrett staged these incidents for publicity. Then again, I kind of do. It's not a "gay conservative" thing (heck, I'm married to a gay conservative); instead it's a "reality TV" thing. I experience pangs of suspicion and doubt regardless whether these types of reports include Real Housewives, Big Brother contestants, Real World slackers, or Dugger kids. (Jon and Kate just stamped out any genuine sense of trust in Reality TVers, sad to say...) All that aside, I hope that Taylor Garrett didn't stage this incident and that he's doing okay.

I guess the only thing I would only want to follow up with him on one of his last points in the article:

Garrett said he decided to join the show because he wanted to show that there are gay “conservative, Republican, Christians” out there. But he said he has been “destroyed by the gay community” for his views and he’s doubtful he’ll return for another season after this... The point of having lunch with Coulter, he said, is to show people that “just because you don’t support gay marriage doesn’t make you a bigot, doesn’t mean you hate gay people, it just means you disagree on gay issues.” Coulter did not immediately return a request for comment. “The left has turned on anyone that might not agree with gay marriage, they have demonized them,” he said.

I know that the people at GOProud love Ann Coulter and that they even added her to their advisory board in an honorary capacity. I'm sure that there is much to love when you get to know her. But I've read her remarks at GOProud's Homocon 2010 and I've heard her speak elsewhere about gay people and our issues. Maybe she really doesn't hate us, but she also doesn't respect us. And this goes way beyond marriage equality. Coulter wouldn't say the things about gay and lesbian people if she actually respected us. Additionally, I don't understand why someone who is opposed to pretty much any GLBT issues (outside of the acceptance that there are gay people in conservative circles) would be asked to join a conservative gay organization. But GOProud is pretty much a conservative organization that boasts gay and lesbian members, which is an important distinction to make about the group.

I don't think that Garrett and the others at GOProud get that most in the GLBT communities don't appreciate Coulter's ongoing disrespect towards us. Or they don't really care. But they really shouldn't be surprised when people react, even if that reaction is sometimes wrong and inappropriate.

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About Me

My name is Jon. I live in Iowa with my husband Mark and our two sons. We have two dogs. We are adoptive parents of our one son and legal guardians of our other son. I am a huge proponent of foster care and adoption. I am a member of a small, but active UCC church. I have worked in the disability field since high school. Oh, and I like comic books. A lot.
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